If you’re wondering why you would want to further clutter your email box, let me offer some reasons why you might want to bring the old stuff along. First, you’ve got some important stuff in those old emails. I search multiple times daily to recover an old conversation or bit of information that is now an archived email. Additionally, consider the power of Google’s search to find that hidden treasure. Secondly, you can organize your old emails into folders and hide them out of the way or anymore, I just archive it all and just use search. Each Gmail account comes with over 5GB worth of space, so there’s no real reason to delete old emails, just archive them and then they are there when you need them.

Especially if you are upgrading a business email, you will want to have your hands on all of your old quotes and conversations with clients, so when you upgrade bring your old email with you.

Often when we think of mail, we think of using folders to organize it all. Gmail implemented labels in lieu of folders to make organization simpler and more powerful. Labels look a lot like folders in you can click on the Waiting for Response Label and you will find all of the email stored under that designation just as you would with a folder, but the magic happens when you want to have an email in the Jones Account Proposal folder and in the Waiting for Response folder. Folders make you either copy a file to put it in multiple folders or you need to choose where you want the file to live. Labels don’t have the same restrictions, the new proposal email can sit in Waiting for Response, the Jones Account Proposal and a number of other locations by utilizing labels.

It really gets fun when you can use labels along with the automation of filters. Filters let you set up a set of rules with a specific action. e.g. All files with the “Doughnuts” in the subject, add the “Police” label. Or all emails from mywife@home.com, label “Urgent — Wife Email”. It also can help you ignore some of the distractions, you can filter all emails that contain “Egyptian” “Prince” and “Request to help Launder Money” to automatically delete.

One of the most useful label techniques that I use is highlighting all emails from one of my alternate email addresses. e.g. Add the label “Trey Work” to all emails addressed to “trey@work.com.” While all emails come to one box, those from my work email show up in the inbox with the label Trey Work. Additionally, I can click on the Trey Work label and quickly review all emails sent to my work address.